Late Night Live — Full program podcast

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was elected he promised to address a gap in federal anti-discrimination law which allowed faith-based schools to sack gay kids and teachers, but he has thus far failed to do so. Now Independent MP for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, has introduced a bill to end the right of religious schools and universities to punish gay and trans pupils and staff. Plus, as AI reshapes society, what does it mean to be human? Father Paolo Benanti, advisor to the Holy Sea on AI Ethics is in Australia to examine the moral questions posed by artificial intelligence.

Guests:

• Allegra Spencer, Member for Wentworth
• Father Paolo Benanti, Professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University, in Rome, and advisor to the Holy Sea on AI Ethics

Two writers investigate two mysteries from 19th Century Australia. 

Kate Grenville uncovers a bundle of letters in the archives about the NSW country school teacher Joseph Connor, accused of beating his students. Was he a monster or the victim of a small-town vendetta? And Sally Young solves Australia's strangest political crime: the theft of the ceremonial mace from Victoria's state parliament in 1891.

Guests:

• Kate Grenville, author, 'The Country Schoolmaster: A Mystery in 88 Letters'
• Sally Young, author, 'The Curious Case of the Stolen Mace: Solving Australia's Strangest Political Crime'

The Lord of the Rings made J.R.R. Tolkien one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. But who was the obsessive, conservative and often difficult man behind Middle-earth? And Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, has a new and equally remarkable true story to tell. In 1942 in Nazi-occupied Paris, the Nazis arrest a Jewish family, but their 11-year-old daughter escapes to her piano teacher, Andrée Levallois. Andrée is secretly a French Resistance operative who risks everything, including her own family, to hide the child.  

Guests: 

• DJ Taylor, author of The King under the Mountain
• Heather Morris, author of The Piano teacher of Montparnasse

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

Our regular US political commentator on the Cornell University sexual assault case, the failed execution of Christa Pike, and the dire outlook for the Republicans, four weeks before the midterms.

Valerie Trouet, a paleo-climate scientist, compares tree rings from living trees with historical and archaeological wood to reconstruct climate patterns going back thousands of years. It enables her to look at how climate has influenced wars, empires and natural disasters.

Guests:

• Bruce Shapiro, contributing editor with The Nation magazine and Director of the Global Center for Journalism and Trauma
• Valerie Trouet, professor in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. Book 'Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings'

We revisit two memorable LNL conversations from recent times: Simon Winchester's cultural history of the wind, and Australian writer Lech Blaine's astonishing account of his beautiful, terrifying childhood - growing up in Queensland pubs stalked by Christian fanatics. 

Guests: 

• Simon Winchester, journalist and author of The Breath of the Gods: The History and Future of the Wind
• Lech Blaine, author of Australian Gospel

Confronted with a series of existential threats, Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue in their new book that wealthy billionaires, including the so-called "tech bros", have become focused not on how we can deal with those threats,  but who will best survive them.  They warn there is an urgent need for far more limits on dangerous technologies than US President Donald Trump's Whitehouse accord. Plus meet the author who breakfasted in ten Indian cities, to discover how Indian culture is reflected through its breakfast foods, makers and consumers.

Guests: 

• Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, co-authors, End times fascism and the fight for the living world
• Priyadarshini Chatterjee, Kolkata-based travel, culture and food writer

Get in touch:

We'd love to hear from you! Email us at [email protected]

The German Peasants' War was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. In 1524 and 1525, it swept across Germany with astonishing speed as thousands of people massed in armed bands to demand a new and more egalitarian order. The response from feudal overlords was brutal, but while the rebellion was suppressed, it would continue to influence subsequent revolts, contribute to the emergence of peasant and worker movements in the following centuries and serve as a precursor to larger social and political transformations in Europe. 

• Guest: Professor Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, Oxford University and author of Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War, published by Hachette
• Producer: Catherine Zengerer

A host of new companies are rushing to apply for seabed exploration licences promised by the Trump administration - but are they equipped for this venture? Plus, trauma has gone from the clinic to the culture wars, but is a politics built around personal suffering crowding out class, power and solidarity?

Guests

• Todd Woody, Reporter, Bloomberg News
• Catherine Liu, Professor of Film & Media Studies at the University of California, Author of Traumatised: The New Politics of public suffering

Mark Kenny reviews PM Anthony Albanese's week at the United Nations in New York, and asks whether the Australian leader should be more assertive in rebuking the US President, on issues like the regulation of AI. Volkswagon is cutting jobs, considering factory closures, and even turning one car plant towards defence production. Can the company reinvent itself before its glory days become history? And David Marr takes you to the outback, to see Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in flood. 

Guests

• Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute, host of Democracy Sausage podcast;
• Jack Ewing, Journalist, New York Times
• David Marr, Late Night Live presenter

Doctors work long hours in hospitals around the world, but visiting doctors in Gaza have to endure just some of what their local peers do: military attack, inadequate resources, inadequate food, and a starving, distressed population. 

Plus, the curious history of vanilla - and how, despite its exotic flavouring and difficult cultivation, "vanilla" became a term for bland. 

Guests:

• Dr Bushra Othman, Palestinian Australian General Surgeon from Naarm/Melbourne. Has done three stints in Gaza, and edited the book.
• Dr Amy Neilson, QLD-based specialist in rural and remote , tropical, and emergency medicine. Visiting Medical Officer in the NSW Hunter/New England regions. Senior lecturer in medical education at James Cook University, Cairns. Spent two weeks in Gaza in 2025.
• Professor Eric Jennings, historian, University of Toronto. Author of 'Vanilla: the history of an extraordinary bean’ (Yale University Press)